Saturday, October 14, 2006

Modyland's First Podcast (ModCast) Has Launched

Since we have a bye week for Saratoga Rugby, I thought that I would detail my experiences with creating a podcast, which I have named The ModCast (but pronounced Mode Cast). It has been an interesting experience, thus far.

The first part of this was attending Rick Hengsterman's Podcasting Workshop. Rick is a former colleague of mine from my Ballston Spa days. He gave us a two-hour crash course in podcasting. The most valuable parts of the workshop were, for me as a person who is at least a little computer savvy, all of the resources to get my audio up and running. From exposing me to GCast.com to explaining simple audio mixing software (and free, to boot), like the program Audacity, I felt that I was ready to roll when I walked out of the door (although the terms RSS and XML are still a little confusing). Info on Rick's workshop can be found at his website, The History Shack.

The following, I think Rick did because I was in the room. He let it slip that he spent six hours mixing his podcast intro music, which he tried to limit to 60 seconds. That seemed about right to me, one hour of work for ten seconds of audio. So, the first order of business after setting up an account at GCast and downloading Audacity was to start working on my intro. I have about fifty seconds, and I am a little more efficient than Rick. Its only took me 4 hours and 45 minutes.

One item of note: when it came time to actually produce the content that I wanted to share, I mostly figured as a person who spends his days talking on his feet, that getting through what I wanted to say on the first shot would be easy. And while I did only do one take for Episode One, it was a lot harder than I thought. I can see why some podcasters use scripts, and depending on how I use them in the future, I might at least have a rough sketch or order of events. Overall, it was a lot of fun to do.

Do you want to see what it is all about? Don't take my word for it. Check it out yourselves at The ModCast. iPod users can subscribe to get automatic updates. For those of us who don't have iPods, you can download it as a MP3 and listen to it on your computer or your non-iPod MP3 players or, eventually, make CD's of several episodes. The suggestion box for episodes is always open!

3 comments:

Da'Ka rih hon tye said...

Oh, now see! How great is this. If you wonder why I wrote what I wrote on that broken arrow, and in my final report for HS, well, here it is. It's incredible that your doing this for your students. I mean, this is probably the greatest personal advancement in education (at least that I've seen) since teachers started creating their own websites for students.

Pete Mody said...

It scares me to think where the high school classroom will be in 2015. I was just commenting to Mr. DeGuardi about how far we have come since teacher websites really started to become the rage in like 1999-2000.

I am currently also working on a video center for student work through youtube.com. Having some technical difficulties, but we'll see how it goes. I don't think I have enough hours in the day to really run with all the technology that I am picking up this fall. I need a support staff!!!

DaKa rih' hon tye said...

Well, now that youtube.com idea seems like a good one. Hmmm...it's true what they say. You really can find anything on youtube...
And as far as the high school classroom in 2015 deal is concerned, I've said it before and I'll say it again, technology is a double-edged sword. Something that can truly enrich our live, while still managing to steal something dear from us.
That said, I can't see anything wrong with the point you teachers seem to be at as of now. At the very least, it appears that you've done away with many of the popular assignment excuses of the day...